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Monkeying Around with Clay

I wanted to share one of my latest clay projects that I've been working on for the last phase of my certification process. I absolutely love monkeys because it has a lot of sentimental value for me so I decided to base my final deco clay project on them.  I drew a lot of concepts and it finally evolved to the image above.  Bernie graciously painted the concept out for me in color and I absolutely love how he captured the cuteness of the baby monkey so perfectly!

The gorilla head on top is what Bernie made while I made the one on the bottom. Since Bernie is an excellent sculptor as well as a painter, he gave me some helpful techniques to make it look more realistic.  As you can see, his looks more realistic, but a little scarier than the one I made. I think it has to do with the fact that he works for a game company where he draws monsters all day long!

After I made the head and the body, I made a base out of a lazy susan I bought from bed bath and beyond with a 20% off coupon of course and some styrofoam.

Then I made some grass and placed the monkey on top of it.  I wanted it to have some more character so I added a backpack with some detail on it.

I love the detail with the buckle and the clay almost looks like it's made of suede.

Here's what the backpack looked like on my blue friend.

After I was done with the gorilla, I needed to make his little brother and since I wanted the baby monkey to look just right, I made two sample heads.  I also made some small flowers to add to the grass because I wanted them to look like they were walking through a meadow of flowers.

And here's the final product! This took me two weeks working non stop to complete and I am definitely happy with the results =)

A Special Valentine's Day

This year Bernie surprised me with an amazing Valentine's Day gift that I had to share with everyone.  He usually buys me a beautiful arrangement of flowers, but this year he gave me this!

He painted me this beautiful picture of lovebirds that represents us.  This just reminds me how thankful I am to have him as a husband.  I hope all of you had a wonderful Valentine's Day to share with your loved ones!

Flowers, Paintings and More!

These days my studio has been incredibly busy with me working on my final projects before I can finally be certified to teach Deco Clay! I can't believe how far I've come these past couple of months and how much I've grown in this art form. Some people think I'm crazy to spend time actually hand crafting each flower petal by petal to create an arrangement. It is something that takes a lot of patience and attention to detail, but I absolutely love it. I'll probably do a future post on the actual process of creating each flower.

My most recent project that I'm working on is a tall vase arrangement. Most of my arrangements have been pretty small so this will be the most challenging project yet and time consuming. I've decided to incorporate peonies, different color roses and hydrangeas. I've completed the flowers, but they have yet to be painted and attached to clay stems.

Almost every detail is made of clay including the stems which surprises a lot of people. I spent most of yesterday rolling them out one right after the other.

I also wanted to post some of my previous projects that I had worked on. One of the projects was a wreath that I had to create completely out of clay flowers. I had a lot of leftover from previous projects that didn't turn out quite well and decided to use them for this project since the actual flowers weren't the focal point. Around 50-60 flowers were used for this...crazy...I know!

Also, most recently, we celebrated my mother in law's 60th birthday and Bernie and I decided to give her thoughtful gifts that we created ourselves. My mother in law is actually an accomplished artist herself and she does beautiful watercolor paintings. I of course made her a clay floral arrangement and Bernie painted a portrait that turned out really well.

Bernie is an extremely talented artist and there's so much that I'm learning from him. He actually whipped up this painting in one night after work!

Artist turned Sous Chef for a Night

I have an amazing and talented friend Chef Julie Yoon who had a cooking class at my loft in the beginning of January.  Her photographer husband Joe Yoon took some beautiful photos of that night and graciously also took some pictures of my clay flowers.

I met Julie almost a half a year ago at church and we immediately connected as friends.  She's supported me as a friend through a very difficult time and has been an incredible supporter of my art.  Recently we've decided to partner businesses and that is why I'd like to feature her in my blog today.

She had a private cooking class at my home and it was in lieu of a bachelorette party for the lucky bride.  This was actually my first time witnessing her in action so to speak and I have to say that she is an excellent teacher and chef. No detail goes unnoticed and every morsel of food just melts in your mouth.  I was her "sous chef" that night...uh...well I pretended to be =)  I walked around acting like I knew how to chop and caramelize onions and whatever else needed to be done.  Luckily she asked Janice another friend of ours to help out that night or else I would have been completely lost!

If anyone in the Orange County area wants to take a cooking class, I would highly recommend her.  Her accolades speak for themselves.  She's worked with a lot of big name chefs on the Food Network while she was living in New York and now is trying to build a name for herself out here on the west coast.

Here are some pictures that Joe took of my clay flowers that served as decor. Thanks Joe!

If you've been following my blog, you probably recognize these arrangements from my previous posts.  Hopefully, I'll be able to post some more of my recent projects soon.  Have a great week!

Peonies, Peonies and Peonies!

I've been completely obsessed with making peonies. The more I study them, sketch them and finally make them, I come to increasingly love this flower more.

I'm just amazed at how God took the time to intricately design and make each petal and then place them together to create this beautiful masterpiece.  Before I started making flowers, I never took the time to really appreciate them.  Better yet, I never knew names of different flowers until a couple of months ago.  I didn't know the difference between a peony or a poppy.  Bernie actually loves to buy me flowers and when he would bring home an arrangement, I would just look back and admire them from a distance, but never really saw the depth of detail and beauty of each bloom.

Here's an arrangement that I made that incorporates some of my peony studies.  It's difficult to replicate the whimsical nature of a real peony, but I think I'm getting closer.  It's challenging to make each petal thin and lifelike with clay, but my motto is practice makes close to perfect!  The arrangement below consists of peonies, roses and a small gerber daisy all made from Deco clay.

I hope you have an amazing day and really soak in the beauty of God's creation all around you!

New Beginnings

After a month and a half hiatus, I have decided to revisit my very neglected blog with an update on how I've spent the first part of 2010.  I love New Year's because it's always an opportunity for a fresh start.  It's only been a couple of weeks, but already the year has been busy with new resolutions to accomplish and projects to complete!

My Debut at the Santiago Art Walk 

With our big move to the art district in Santa Ana, I've been preparing to open my art gallery to debut my own artwork, but the debut came earlier than I had anticipated.  One of our neighbors, who is also Bernie's coworker, offered his gallery to showcase my work this weekend since my own gallery was not ready.  I was hesitant because I felt I didn't have enough work to show, but my amazing and supportive husband wouldn't take no for an answer.

With one day to prepare, we both frantically spent the morning putting together arrangements for that evening's art walk.  I feel so lucky to have a professional artist for a husband because we were figuring out compositions, color and texture together.  We literally were working against to clock to have everything completed before the art walk was to start.

I was starting with nothing but my work.  No business cards, no company name, no logo... just a simple printout of a sign up sheet if people wanted more information about future purchases or classes.

As people would walk by my work, Bernie would whisper excitedly about how people were signing up or complimenting my pieces.  He would nudge me to go over, but I just couldn't get myself to look. Overall, I felt it was a successful yet humble beginning to my new venture into my career in art.

Here are some pictures that Bernie took of that night.

The center arrangement is actually a wedding bouquet that I just put into a silver vase.  I needed to be resourceful with so little time to prepare. 

I have a lot more pictures, but I think I'll save those for another post. Have a blessing week!